[Sine]

HW : cubox i1
image : XBian_2014.05.26_CuBox-i.img (the march image causes a runtime error in the windows installer)

I have been using Xbian on a raspi for some time now, I recently acquired a Cubox i1 for my living room setup and i'm having some frustrating issues with it ...

After I flash the image it starts ... most of the time, sometimes it panics at boot and at other times it successfully manages to start xbian but crashes after it gets in the GUI ( the RSS ticker halts at the O in Gotham.

When it does start and I try to update it with xbian-config it downloads ALL the updates no matter what I select. It seems like they get installed correctly but after a reboot the system is stone dead.
The TV goes from unsupported resolution to no signal and SSH-ing into the device is not possible.

I'm a bit stuck here, I tried partually installing packages, but as mentioned above it installs all updates no matter what.

-edit-

I connected a PC monitor and it shows the Solidrun U-boot sequence, and blanks after that.

[IriDium]

@Sine
Always use the latest image (The March one has issues and should be removed)
I've never had a problem with the May image. Are you using the latest Win32diskimager? and formatting the SD card first? I tend to do that - format as NTFS and it all works fine.

After it boots () the upgrade should go without any issues.

The PC monitor is a known issue - especially if not native HDMI. I tried with a DVI -> HDMI connector and got nothing on the screen. I bought a HDMI monitor just for this (and other) reasons.

However, saying all that I have the i4 and you have the i1 (Which it is was never tested on - afaik). The only real difference is the memory but that shouldn't be an issue.

If you do get it to boot, can you post the output of xbmc.log and dmesg via pastebin - it will help in debugging.

Can you post the directory of /boot from the SD card and the output from uEnv.txt.

As a test can you tryone of the other distros, Archlinux, Android, Geexbox, Openelec and see if you can at least get it to boot.

[Sine]

Hi IriDium

I have been messing with this thing the whole day, I only tried the march image because the may one gave me a hard time.
I tested the I1 with geexbox (it came preinstalled with geex) and that seems to work fine (except for control over CEC, but I didn't look into that yet)

I tried three diffrent SD cards, (4G type 6 integral, 16G type 10 kingston and a 16G type 4 kingston)

All have the same problem, everything seems to work ok on 1st boot (most of the times it freezes the first time it starts the graphical shell, everything works after a power cycle)
Everything is hunky dory until you update. After updating it crashes at boot or maybe it just won't boot I have no way to tell either way, it just goes stone dead.

I Have not succeeded in booting a updated install, I don't know how useful a dmesg from before the update would be, same thing with the uEnv and xbmc.log. It doen't seem to get anywhere near where XBMC should start, from what I see it either doesn't boot or it crashes the moment it tries to do so.

My boot dir looks like this:

Code:

total 17229
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root    1072 Jun 28 18:02 boot.scr
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root    1000 Jun 28 18:02 boot.scr.txt
-rwx------ 1 root root     388 Jun 28 17:49 cmdline.default
-rwx------ 1 root root     388 Apr 18 08:04 cmdline.new
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root      51 Jun 28 18:07 config.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root       0 Jun 28 22:31 dump.txt
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root root   43332 Jun 19 21:26 imx6dl-cubox-i.dtb
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root root   42379 Jun 19 21:26 imx6dl-hummingboard.dtb
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root root   43789 Jun 19 21:26 imx6q-cubox-i.dtb
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 6199588 Jun 28 18:07 initramfs.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 6196151 May 26 22:35 initramfs.gz.old
drwx------ 2 root root   12288 Mar 25 21:40 lost+found
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root      98 Mar 15 02:16 mks
-rwxrwxr-x 1 root root 5019616 Jun 19 21:26 zImage

Apart from the problems above, first impressions are not bad. This thing is MUCH faster than a Pi.

[IriDium]

Ok - I'm confused, in the first post you said the March image gave a runtime error, whilst in the second post you said the May image gave you "a hard time". So you're actually using the March image - which you will see in previous posts has issues.

So I have to assume you are trying to use the March image which I recommended not to use.

I believe auto-update is set as default.

So back to basics.

Use Xbian installer - use May image and boot.

Report issues again

[Sine]

Sorry IriDium, I could have been a little bit clearer.

I started off with the may image, wich is a bit flaky at first boot, but after a couple of power cycles works quite nicely. That is ... until I run the updates, after that the ting appears to be dead.

Only then did I try the march image to see if that would resolve matters (update without breaking stuff) But the march image crashes the windows installer on serveral machines, so .. no-go.

So to be clear.
I never had a running march image. ( it wouldn't let me )
The may image installs, works, dies after updating. ( Tried again today with the same result )

I uploaded a tarball with the contents of the boot partition and a dmesg.txt with te dmesg output from BEFORE the reboot but AFTER the update.
http://www.gigawatts.nl/co/Xbian/boot.tar

[Xbianfan]

Hi,

does anyone know how to boot from hdd per eSATA?
I changed in /boot/cmdline.txt root=/dev/mmcblk0p2 to root=/dev/sda2 but it's still booting from ad-card

Prior to this I flashed the xbian cubox-I-Image from may to sd and hdd.

[IriDium]

@Sine I've just installed a new image and upgraded - all without issue. So I have no idea what is going wrong.

My process.
1) Format SD card as NTFS.
2) Run Xbian-installer (Might be worth deleting the stored image and let it download a new image just in case it is corrupted.
3) Boot cubox.
4) ssh and run xbian-config. Update distributions, update and upgrade. Select all and let the process finsh. Check the install log for any serious errors.

---

@Xbianfan The process is different for the Cubox.

I don't think you can just flash the image to the USB stick and hope it will work. Unfortunately the Xbian-clone function isn't working at the moment either.

Once it is, you need to change boot.scr.txt and then run mks from the boot folder.

[Xbianfan]

(30th Jun, 2014 09:22 PM)IriDium Wrote:  Once it is, you need to change boot.scr.txt and then run mks from the boot folder.

Thank you for your fast replay!

You are right, it seems really not that easy. I also tried this manual (the part for older versions):
http://wiki.xbian.org/doku.php/installation_usb

And I changed root= in boot.scr.txt, but it still boots from sd-card
Is there really no workaround to do this?

With another cubox-image all I had to do was changing root= in the file /boot/uEnv.txt and it booted from hdd, but I would love to use xbian!

[IriDium]

Sounds like you didn't run mks as I said

[Xbianfan]

(30th Jun, 2014 11:40 PM)IriDium Wrote:  Sounds like you didn't run mks as I said

You are right, I thought that was an typing error because I don't know what mks is and google was not really helpful and the cubox-i did not know this command. So I thought it must actually be mkfs for formatting the external drive.

But that was obviously the wrong conclusion
Could you please tell me how to run mks?

[IriDium]

It is in the /boot directory - so cd /boot; sudo ./mks

It will compile boot.scr.txt into boot.scr

So make backups of both files beforehand - just in case.

If you do get it running on the USB drive or eSata do you feel confidant to write a quick wiki type guide?

[Xbianfan]

Thank you, you are great!
That did work without any problems! Now it is booting from my SATA-Drive.

[IriDium]

Can I ask you what steps you performed to get the image on the eSATA drive? I'm sure others will be interested.

[Xbianfan]

Yes of course, that's what I did:

I followed almost this guide http://wiki.xbian.org/doku.php/installation_usb (Older versions) and changed root= to the external drive in boot.scr.txt.

The exact steps are:
1. Unmount external drive and make filesystem:
sudo umount /dev/sda1
sudo mkfs.btrfs -L xbian-usb /dev/sda1

2. Mount it and copy files from sd-card
sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt
sudo rsync -aAX /* /mnt/ --exclude={/dev/*,/proc/*,/sys/*,/tmp/*,/run/*,/mnt/*,/media/*,/lost+found,/home/*/.gvfs} --progress

3. Edit boot.scr.txt
sudo nano /boot/boot.scr.txt
change root=/dev/mmcblk0p2 to root=/dev/sda1 (or what your partition on the external drive is)
remove subvol=root/@,

and compile boot.scr with:
cd /boot; sudo ./mks

sudo reboot

That's all!


UPDATE: After that the BTRFS-volume "Root" is missing, which is producing an error then using apt-get.
To fix this, create it with:
sudo -i
cd /
btrfs sub create ROOT
btrfs sub snap / ROOT/@

and then re add the previous deleted text at the same position:
sudo nano /boot/boot.scr.txt
subvol=ROOT/@,
and compile it again with: cd /boot; sudo ./mks

(It's important that ROOT is written the same way as created, in this case in capital letters!)
For more informations see: https://github.com/xbianonpi/xbian/issues/556

__________________________
I use an eSata -> Sata cabel with a usb-connection only for the 5V. The USB-cable is connected with a powered usb-hub, because it did not work with the usb-cable connected directly to the cubox-i.

UPDATE: Updated the wiki-page for usb-installation: http://wiki.xbian.org/doku.php/installation_usb
Hope it's all right I'm not an expert, it's still more trial and error.

[CurlyMo]

@Xbianfan, can you add this to the wiki and link on the forum to your edited page.